Liourdis, who writes on Greek Wikipedia as “Diu,” faces monetary and criminal penalties over the article he edited. The article mentions that Katsanevas was called a “family disgrace” in the will of his father-in-law, former Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. In the will, Papandreou also accused Katsanevas of trying to exploit his name to further his political ambitions.
The Wikimedia Foundation is defending the case. If this case goes the wrong way, it will set a precedent that may have a long term chilling effect on Wikipedia and on publicly consumable writing, in general.
Define wrong way. Wikipedia is a bastion for a small number of bullies who write articles on topics or people they have a personal investment in, who ignore predominant female and foreign-national figures and actively attack articles they do not like. I have had first hand involvement in attempts to post information about foreign academics working in the US. Those posts have been bombarded with inappropriate comments (often racist, both veiled and blatant) and take down threats. These threats are predicated on criteria that has been waved for academics that are non-minority, non-foreign nationals. The same applies to female academics who have seen their profiles defaced by male wiki editors. Wikipedia is an unfriendly place for anything that exists outside the narrow view of dominant white men. Frankly Wikipedia deserves to receive the message that this type of nonsense and blatant shaping of information to fit limited biases will not be tolerated. Wikipedia should hold itself to high standards. If it fails to do so (which clearly it has) then I welcome the involvement of legal bodies.